Years after the so-called ‘European Refugee Crisis,’ over 20,000 refugees were still hovering

between Berlin’s shelters, but public discourse has waned. The 1970s Heckeshorn Hochhaus, once a tuberculosis clinic housing block, now serves as a shelter. This intervention - yet small and temporary - was intended to engage with this vulnerable community, employing design with empathy.

Designed ‘for people’, making the invisible visible, unprogrammed, communal, passive, and modest. From woven fabrics that soften the austerity of the concrete pergola to modular furniture with multiple affordances, spatial design meets vulnerability with compassion. Raw materials, simple colors, unpretentious forms.